{"id":547,"date":"2004-03-27T07:57:33","date_gmt":"2004-03-27T07:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/?p=547"},"modified":"2025-02-15T23:22:54","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T04:22:54","slug":"roni-horn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/27\/roni-horn\/","title":{"rendered":"Roni Horn interview for ‘Flash Art’ magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

For ‘Flash Art’ magazine
\n

\"Roni<\/a>
Roni Horn, Cabinet of 2004, Special Project for Flash Art<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThey\u2019re jarring, garish, disturbing and\u2026they\u2019re portraits of us. Roni Horn\u2019s clown photographs are a departure from previous projects, more provocative than the stony-faced Icelandic woman in \u2018You Are the Weather\u2019 (1996) or the roiling surface of the River Thames in \u2018Still Water\u2019 (1999). Nevertheless, they\u2019re still intended to make her audience reflect on its own response to the work. As Horn explained in a discussion with Merrily Kerr, the viewer\u2019s experience is paramount, even more important to her than the aesthetic aspects of the photographs and sculptures themselves. Acting as ambiguous symbols, the clowns lead viewers to analyze their process of looking and the reactions that arise.<\/p>\n

MK \u2013 In the book format of \u2018Cabinet of\u2019 you see the clown\u2019s face one image at a time, while this project for Flash Art is arranged in a grid. How will the viewer\u2019s experience be different?<\/p>\n

RH \u2013 I originally conceived of it as a grid on one wall. When I had the working photographs up for the pieces I did with Dia, they hadn\u2019t been color corrected or scaled, but that\u2019s how I had them on the wall – going 12 feet up. I thought, it\u2019s very harsh [and] really aggressive, but it has a quality that interests me. I\u2019ve [also] installed it as a surround like \u2018You Are the Weather\u2019. Sometimes a work has more than one option in terms of the kind of relationship it can have with the viewer. Book form offers a very different experience than an \u2018in the round\u2019 experience. I\u2019m interested in these differences. So I often work in dual forms.<\/p>\n

MK \u2013 The viewer\u2019s experience is the goal of your work, right?<\/p>\n

RH \u2013There is no other point for me. There is no other reason to involve an audience unless you\u2019re dealing with the quality of the experience you\u2019re putting out there.<\/p>\n

MK \u2013 You\u2019ve been quoted as saying that you don\u2019t consider yourself a visual artist. Could you explain?<\/p>\n

RH \u2013 The thing is, I prefer not to be anything, because then I keep all my options. Once I say what I am, then it\u2019s like excluding everything else. So why bother saying it? I don\u2019t think most of my work comes from the visual. It starts in a more conceptual realm and the visual precipitates out of it. Language is a big factor in the development of the work. It\u2019s kind of pre-visual.<\/p>\n

MK \u2013 Speaking of language, you often talk about Emily Dickinson\u2019s writing in relation to your work.<\/p>\n

RH \u2013 There is something in the way that Dickinson uses language that allows me to cultivate the idea of presence around it. And that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing with those objects [text sculptures]. When I think of language it\u2019s an intangible form. Language is, to some extent, a philosophical device or mind device. It\u2019s based in the need to express or communicate, perhaps, but there is this interesting amalgam that occurs in Dickinson that is both of language and of actuality.<\/p>\n

She, for whatever reason, in a very isolated fashion, was having this extraordinary dialogue with the empirical – what was in front of her. Basically, I\u2019m amplifying her implications. [It relates to] that idea of language in Jewish culture which is really a substitute, in part, for not having access to the graven image. So there is an element of that in where these pieces come from. They are views in a room. What I mean by that is that when you look at it, you have to enter another space to have that experience. And that other space is the vertical dimension of what it says and where that takes you. In the sense of your understanding where that takes you. And that is all yours.<\/p>\n

MK \u2013 Does \u2018Cabinet of\u2019 challenge viewers to look for the experience instead of musing on the clown imagery?<\/p>\n

RH \u2013 \u2018Cabinet of\u2019 is a kind of self-portrait, definitely. But, it\u2019s a self-portrait of the person looking at the work. And that\u2019s the way I see it. Clown is just a metaphor for mirror. Because what a clown originally functioned as was an amoral symbol enabling viewers to imagine themselves in these roles or to understand their own morality through the clown figure, which was a kind of symbolic form. You could say it\u2019s a generic portrait of humanity or you could imagine it as a self \u2013portrait of the viewer expressed through the clown image \u2013 these are the same thing.<\/p>\n

Basically, the clown thing isn\u2019t what interested me originally. Not historically [but] more in the idea of appearance. The clown is not about actuality. It\u2019s the opposite, it\u2019s of appearance; it\u2019s a symbol. And the cloud, all it is is appearance; it\u2019s moisture and air. Now this isn\u2019t very interesting to me to break the thing down that way, but really, the two objects are immaterial realities. One in the fabric of nature and the other in the fabric of humankind, but both functioning exclusively through appearance. They have no other life. So that was how they came together. \u2018Cabinet of\u2019 came out of that and that obviously is connected to \u2018Cabinet of Dr Caligari\u2019 the film. It\u2019s again, not literal, but every cabinet is an interior of some kind.<\/p>\n

MK \u2013Your work requires viewers to have a degree of self-knowledge. Are people able to be that self-aware?<\/p>\n

RH – I have to work, in a way, with these assumptions about my audience. Because these are the things I value and seek to embody or activate. I think a lot of people won\u2019t. A lot of people will see an object and they\u2019ll go on to the next show. It\u2019s about individual character and what moves you. I think the work acts more as a mirror for one\u2019s limitations or one\u2019s potential. I\u2019m not trying to educate, I\u2019m not trying to communicate or impose my morality. This is what I have to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For ‘Flash Art’ magazine They\u2019re jarring, garish, disturbing and\u2026they\u2019re portraits of us. Roni Horn\u2019s clown photographs are a departure from previous projects, more provocative than the stony-faced Icelandic woman in \u2018You Are the Weather\u2019 (1996) or the roiling surface of the River Thames in \u2018Still Water\u2019 (1999). Nevertheless, they\u2019re still intended to make her audience … <\/p>\n

Read more “Roni Horn interview for ‘Flash Art’ magazine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[8,18,9,15,14,13,12,17,10,16,11],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-contemporary","tag-critic","tag-exhibition","tag-gallery","tag-new-york","tag-photography","tag-sculpture","tag-tour","tag-visual-art"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BDOD-8P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12213,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/12213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}